Saturday, December 12, 2009

Europe vs. Google: The Next Chapter

A scanner passes over a book as part of Google Inc.'s project to create digital versions of all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world. Carlos Osorio / AP

From Time Magazine:

Google may be valued at more than $185 billion and boast millions of users, but that doesn't mean the Internet giant is any match for the diminutive French President Nicolas Sarkozy. On Dec. 8, Sarkozy warned Google he would not allow France to be "stripped" of its literary heritage, an apparent reference to Google's enormous book-digitizing project. "We won't let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is," Sarkozy said during a round-table discussion in eastern France. "We are not going to be stripped of what generations and generations have produced in the French language, just because we weren't capable of funding our own digitization project."

Read more ....

No comments: